I

5. There is one thing more in the omission of which, we should be miserably out in our calculations. It is that which embarrasses the whole proceeding. have been speaking as if all the items in this numeration were known and certain; but ah there is one unknown and variable quantity in this arithmetic, and there is no algebraic process by which the value of it can be ascertained. We called it seventy years, but in the ten thousand cases it means nothing like that. It only may mean that, and it may and does also stand for any thing less, down to the infant's first and only moment; and we can never know what it stands for, until it is too late to care for it. This it is that baffles us, and there is no rule in arithmetic which will help us out of the difficulty. There is a constant addition of days, but how many yet remain in the hand that tells them off, we have no means of knowing. It is the secret of the Lord, which he never tells, not even to them that fear him. He may have written for ten, or thirty, or fifty years, or he may strike the account to-morrow, or this night, he may break in upon your anticipations and hopes, and say to thee, when thy heart is beating high and strong, "Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of thee." Oh! forget not this unknown number; forget not this uncertainty, this embarrassing, most alarming uncertainty.

And now what is the final result? Where ends our calculation? What is life? Not the probable life; but the life we are certain of; the life we can calculate upon; the life which we have a right to call ours. It is this, and no more than this: the

present, indivisible, irredeemable moment added to the moments that are past; and since, in some sense, and for all that is yet to be done, the moments past are as if they had never been, it is this moment only, which you cannot reflect upon, ere it is gone irrecoverable, and which, when gone, is past all ransom price to redeem. There was a price in heaven for the soul; but there is none for lost and squandered days. Our days, when numbered, are reduced to this moment, this, and perhaps the next, and as many more as God will. It is now, and the very least which that word ever signifies. You sit unalarmed, ye dying men. I know why. You are thinking that the probabilities are millions to one; that life, to you, is more, much more than I am making it. You are right. I am only contending for the one chance that is against you. I argue but for the possibility. That is enough for me. There is one against you; and, oh! it is a dreadful thing to play at a game, when the stake is eternity, at any odds, at any hazard. Great as is the probability of life, it is ever diminishing; and the time will come, when the probability still continuing that you will live, the fact will be that you will die; and that this is not a false or puerile calculation, how often does the alone arbiter of life make bare his arm to prove upon the man who counted on long years of life and pleasure here. I have finished the calculation.

II. And now do you ask me what lessons are to be learned? And what inferences are to be drawn from this computation of our days? Tell me first, oh man, after what I have said, have you laid up a

treasure for yourself in heaven? have you labored diligently and successfully for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life? have you sought already the kingdom and righteousness of God and found them? have you secured the everlasting things? done and well done the work given you of God to do? Hast thou repented, and believed? Art thou reconciled, renewed? If, brethren, I knew no more of you than that you form a part of God's intellectual creation, I should either not ask such questions, or not wait for an answer. Surely, I should say, they have done, they must have done all this. Man is not mad, surely. Made, as he is, in the image of God, he cannot be the infatuated being to put off important concerns, yea, the most important, to an uncertain and precarious future. Knowing that the earthly house of his tabernacle is even to be dissoived, he has of course secured the tenant spirit, a mansion in the house not made with hands. But, alas! experience does not confirm these anticipations; and I must doubt, though it should bring you in guilty of moral madness, if there be not many here who have done none of these things. What says the conscience suffered to speak out? and let it speak freely, though it be a slave; yet once a year, let it speak the truth with freedom. What says it? that you have not done these things? And ask you then what you have to learn from this numbering of days? That your conduct is more infatuated than human language can express; that your neglect is inexplicable, except on the hypothesis that you are morally insane; that your procrastination argues

the highest presumption, in league with the most thoughtless folly; that your joy is infinitely more melancholy than any sorrow. These are a few of the lessons.

You ask me what you are to learn from the calculation which tells you that, for the laying up of your store for the future, for the making of your peace with God, for the sowing of the seed for eternity, you have neither year, nor day, nor hour, which you can count upon without presumption. What you are to learn from the account which informs you, that, upon the uncertain pulsations of that beating heart, which plays not at your will, and stops at another's bidding, depends the making of your eternal destiny; that, upon the moment, or moments, which remain to be told from the unknown amount, having infinite results, hang everlasting things; and this moment gone, and another and another, the next succeeding may find your spirit at the last bar, before God, and hearing the irreversible award! What you are to learn? When nothing is done! Oh! if there be aught of truth in these statements, and they are all truth, it wants a seraph's burning words to tell the madness that is in the heart of man, while he lives as he does live, neglected of the one great and only needful thing and wasting away his moments, as if he had the bank of eternity to draw upon. Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise, for she provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest.

I beseech you, impenitent man, if there be any power of thinking, or any susceptibility left, if

any care for consequences, if any shuddering dread of an endless hell, if any last lingering desire, in that desolate bosom, after the heaven of God, which eye hath not seen, nor heart conceived, if you are not quite prepared to give up all forever, and embrace damnation, I beseech you in the name of the Infinite, by that soul which stirs within you, that soul immortal as God; that soul, that now tenants a frail and perishing body, by that soul, which hangs balancing over an eternal abyss, by that within you that is bound for God, have mercy upon that soul, that it may not die. Bring it to Jesus that he may wash it in his blood and array it in his righteousness. Oh! come, he waiteth. To-day;

this first of days.

I wish you a happy new year all. Yet perhaps not one of your own happy years; no more of those gay, unthinking, merry ones that have past, and that will only return again to be wept over, but the happiness of a year devoted to God; not such a happiness as you seek to kindle for yourselves, and which is as a forced fire, lighted up in the midst of a surrounding and overshadowing darkness, but that which resembles the clear and cheerful shining of the sun after a night of storm and sorrow.

Christians, this estimate of human life may teach you many important lessons. I suppose you to have attained the one great thing, but with the same loud voice with which it calls on the impenitent to seek God, it calls upon you to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. You are habitually prepared to die, but are you actually ready, standing with